Family and Friends Forum

I’m writing this as a wife who loves someone the world now sees through a single, unforgiving word.

Before any of this, my husband was a boy who learned very early that “no” did not keep him safe. He was groomed. He was abused. Before and after school. Day after day. When he tried to pull away, he was threatened. He reported it, gathered screenshots, told the truth - and was dismissed by the police as he learnt to give into the abuse.

Throughout my marriage husband tried various therapists and medication where he would be labelled as 'lost case,' 'lazy' or told 'we ran out of options.' Multiple suicide attempts later, I find myself married to my husband who discloses all of this to me.

Then came the knock at the door. The life I thought I understood fractured in an instant. I had no knowledge of the images and no warning that something like this existed. The discovery was as devastating to me as it was public.

Months later, the world compressed him into a single word. Predator. Monster. Threat. Headline after headline. "Making images"... as if the term was legally made to further weaken you cause hey, average reader will mean - production, right?

I am still standing in the space between shock and sorrow, trying to reconcile what has been revealed with the history he later entrusted me with: the abused child who sought protection and was dismissed, the adult who struggled visibly but whose inner life I did not fully know.

I did not have prior awareness of this. I am not defending harm. I am trying to understand how trauma, secrecy, shame, and untreated pain can coexist with the person I married and how both realities now sit side by side in our lives.

If you are here because someone you love has been convicted or accused, I see you. Loving them does not mean denying harm. It means holding complexity. It means grieving, questioning and still recognizing the human being underneath the headlines.

We are not caricatures. We are families trying to survive something unimaginably heavy. Some of our loved ones are deeply unwell. Some were once victims themselves. Many tried to get help and were turned away. None of that erases consequences but it does mean the story is bigger than a single word. You or your partner are not a headline. You may be a survior, you may be broken, you may be good and still have done 'bad' things.

If you are carrying this weight too, you are not alone. There is space here for heartbreak, for anger, for accountability, and for hope that healing; however long it takes is still possible.